


you're (not) a slave to the things you've done

by caelzorah, IllustriousHam



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Multi, absolutely zero infidelity in this fic so if that's what you want please go away, expect angst, post season two and a seven year time jump, ultimate ot3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-19 20:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3623910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelzorah/pseuds/caelzorah, https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllustriousHam/pseuds/IllustriousHam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She did not come this far to fall to paranoia and an arrow in the back, and she’s got far too many things left to do to die here now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is spring when Clarke returns to the woods. The season has long since settled – leaves growing green and vibrant, and the forest alive with sound. The forest is muggier than she remembers – air thick with the kind of dampness that clings to the walls of the throat and cloys in the lungs. Clarke is just grateful that she did not have to trek through the winter; she has far less interest in dealing with snow.

She has been following the same trail since the start of her journey, only now it comes to a crossroads. The left path should continue straight to Tondc, then past it to Polis, and it is this path that she should take – but the rightward branch, she also knows, will lead her to Camp Jaha. Clarke pulls at the reigns to halt her mount. The fawn-haired horse huffs and Clarke pats idly at his neck.

‘Izvir,’ she mumbles. ‘I didn’t bring you along for your opinion.’

It has been two days since Clarksburg – the last port of harbour before the desert, the last place she left herself for second thoughts – and for a moment she considers turning around and going straight back to it. No one would call her a coward, regardless of how much of one it would make her.

Beneath her Izvir nickers and it sounds a lot like a laugh. Clarke scoffs and rolls her eyes, pulls the reigns to lead him rightward and nudges at his side with the toes of her boots.

‘You may be right,’ she says, closing her eyes and breathing deeply as he begins to plod along the path towards her former home, ‘but that doesn’t mean I brought you along for your sass, either.’

It is another hour or so before anything begins to look familiar – and even then it takes twenty minutes of recognizable rock formations before Clarke is entirely sure that it’s not just her mind playing tricks on her. The trees are not as she remembers them – but then, she was only there a month in all, back in the beginning, and the seven years since have changed what little she knew. She wonders what else has changed – what else she is going to find when she crests the hill overlooking the crashed remains of Alpha Station.

(She wonders who took charge in her wake and whether or not they did a better job.)

Izvir picks his way over roots and stones beneath the trees and follow the trail up the hillside. This is it – this is the last rise before her return. She will reach the top and the guards will see her, outlined in daylight, and there will be no more chances to turn back to Clarksburg, and sunlight, and sand. She considers it – it would be no terrible thing to turn back now, just a tug on the reigns – but Izvar turns his shaggy head to look back at her over his shoulder with large, dark eyes, and the thought halts in her head.

‘ _We do not belong here_ ,’ that look seems to say. ‘ _But if I do not stumble then neither should you_.’

‘Too right,’ she says tells him with a nod and a wan smile. She reaches the crest of the hill and pulls Izvir to a stop. She expects to see Camp Jaha sprawled at the bottom of the valley, large and overwhelming – but what she finds instead catches the breath in her lungs. She swallows thickly, and her heart races with something that feels a lot like fear.

Where Alpha Station should be there is nothing but fallen metal, broken fences, and burned, trampled land. The last of the Ark is no more.

It is not, however, vacant. Clarke spots a few people moving through the ruins, and even with the distance she can identify their garb as Trigedakru in nature. There are four horses tied by the trees at the edge of the valley – theirs, obviously. Closer to the ruins is a wagon tied to two bulls with a blonde Grounder stood beside it, and as Clarke watches the scavengers bring scrap to him and show him their finds. If he shakes his head they throw the waste aside, but when he nods the pieces are tossed onto the back of the cart.

It is a salvage team, she realises, going through the wreckage of the people she left behind. And all of them – all of the people she saved, dirtied her hands for – they’re all _gone_.

Clarke’s chest tightens and the back of her throat burns, and she urges Izvir forward and nudges him again to speed him to a trot. She wants these strangers to see her, has little care for stealth; they have numbers on her and she knows that already, but they may have answers too. The valley shows signs of a battle long past – old tents burnt and rotting, covered in weeds, vines working around the fallen fence line, swords abandoned to rust in the dirt – and she needs to know: who did this? Where did the _Skaikru_ go?

She is only feet away from the fallen gate and approaching fast when she hears the shout of alarm. She pulls Izvir to a stop and waits for the scavengers to meet her. They funnel out of the ruins and surround her, swords drawn. Their blonde leader steps forward with his blade in hand.

‘Speak before we cut you down,’ the man calls in fluent Trigedasleng, and the direction marks him well as their leader. His voice is familiar, if only vaguely so – some half-forgotten moment from years long past – and she focuses her gaze on him.

There is a large scar down the left side of his face, half covered by a leather eye patch, and the hair on his chin and the line of his jaw is too much to be stubble and too little to be considered a beard. Garbed in leather and furs, and ravaged by time, he is almost unrecognisable – and from his wary glare she knows that he does not recognise her well either (can’t much blame him, they hardly knew each other at all) – but after a long moment Clarke’s foggy mind calls a name to mind.

Practiced ears identify the sound of the notching of a bow behind her – her answer is taking too long, it would seem. Her hands rise calmly to hang in the air – empty, the universal white flag – but she cannot keep her irritation from twisting her features. She did not come this far to fall to paranoia and an arrow in the back, and she’s got far too many things left to do to die here now.

‘Kyle Wick,’ she calls calmly, slowly moving a hand to pull back her hood and bare blonde hair. Her Trigedasleng is clipped, but legible. ‘I am pleased to find you alive.’

He stares back at her with something regarding alarm in his eyes, and she watches as it slowly gives way to recognition. His smile, when it comes, is large and his laugh is booming. He calms his crew with a short order that she doesn’t quite catch, but Clarke doesn’t dismount until their blades are sheathed and they return to work.

Wick approaches her when her feet are on the ground and she is knotting Izvir’s reigns behind his neck to keep them from catching on anything. When she is done she pats twice at the horse’s shoulder; Izvir lets out a low whinny and plods off to graze on whatever grass he can find in the scorched valley.

‘It’s been a while, Clarke,’ Wick says, and he transitions to English now that they are alone. She wonders if it is because it is most natural for him – or because he knows that Trigedasleng is less comfortable for her. ‘We thought you were dead. Don’t go thinking I’m not glad or anything – but why are you here?’

‘Business, originally,’ she tells him idly. ‘I’m ferrying papers to Polis on behalf of a clan to the West. This… _detour_ – was entirely personal.’

The engineer nods and turns to look back across the wreckage of his former home. Clarke keeps her eyes on his face, sees the pain flash quickly across his features before he manages to school them.

Clarke knows that look. Clarke was worn that same expression for seven years.

‘What happened here, Wick?’ she asks lowly. ‘Where did everyone go?’

He looks back to her sadly and sighs, reaching up to adjust his eye patch with anxious fingers. She knows before he speaks that she will find no straight answers here.

‘War happened, Clarke.’ He pauses and purses his lips, and seems to think his answer over before he continues. ‘I would say, but I’m sure the Commanders would prefer it to come from them.’

The years have taught her many things, patience king amongst them. He is hiding something – many things, most likely, given the number of years that have passed – but it’s clear that his silence is not intended to cause her harm so she nods her acceptance and allows him to keep it.

‘Well,’ she says lightly, ‘I was on my way to Polis anyway. Why not plot another point on the list of reasons why?’

He tries to smile and doesn’t really manage it, but the pull at his lips makes the scar on his face more pronounced. He calls out another order to his men in Trigedasleng and they shout back a vague affirmative in return. She follows him into the metal scrap that is all that remains of Camp Jaha, back to the loaded cart, and finds his crew packing up.

‘You should travel home with us,’ he tells her. ‘A lot has changed, Clarke – a lot you’re not going to like. But the hedas will give you any answers you seek.’ He hauls himself up onto the seat of the wagon beside a young Grounder. He pauses, furrows his brow in thought for a moment, and then he smiles – fully, this time, and it even reaches his eye. ‘Raven’s gonna flip when she sees you.’

He flicks at his reigns and the bulls start forward, wagon trundling after them. Clarke watches blankly as he goes, the rest of his men moving out towards their horses.

The notion seems absurd: Raven living in Polis? Her memories cannot match motive to action there at all. Raven who hated the Grounders – Raven, whose first love was killed at their behest – living in their capital? It’s unsettling. But by the way Wick is dressed, the language he speaks, the bodies that follow him – and god, the remains of this camp and the scorched earth around it – it is clear that a lot more has happened here than just what she has heard in whispers over trade. Clarke is not sure she is ready for whatever she will find.

She could still go – turn back to Clarksburg and shake her head ruefully at the village sign like every time before, send a hawk across the desert and go _home_. No one would know – no one but Wick, that is, and his likely giant mouth. No matter how many years have passed she knows – _knows_ – that with news of her survival someone would be sent to find her. They would need to know, to see her well – and she needs to know too: where they are, how they are, what she condemned them to by leaving. She cannot turn back now; she has come too far.

‘Hey Clarke!’ Wick calls back to her, and she doesn’t remember much of him at all, but his sarcastic tone has apparently stuck with her for over half a decade because she identifies it immediately. ‘By all means, take your time! The hedas are _definitely_ the most patient people I know!’

The appeal jolts her into motion and she lifts her fingers to her lips and whistles – three short notes ascending. Izvar trots back to her at the call, stops at her side and tosses his head as if to say ' _well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?'_

‘Hush, you dumb horse,’ she whispers to him as she hauls herself into the saddle. He nickers at the address. ‘This is not the hard part.’

That will be Polis, apparently, and every reunion awaiting her within it – Raven and whatever other Sky People reside there, the heda – _“hedas”_ , Wick said, as in _two,_ and apparently _that_ wasteland rumour was true. It has been seven years of washing her own bloody hands and never finding them any cleaner, of building herself up into the person she _should_ have been – and despite the fact that Kali handed over the papers herself and told her to ride for Polis and that Kass has been saying for months that it is time, Clarke is not sure that she is ready for any of this at all.

She urges Izvir on, though, because the sooner she gets this done the faster she can return to the sands and forget it ever happened at all.


	2. Chapter 2

The main road to Polis is well worn, the earth packed down by many years of travellers coming and going from the capital city. Izvir easily keeps pace with the convoy, and Clarke spends most of the time riding idly beside the wagon while Wick points out the occasional area of interest. For most of this time, Clarke is distracted by thoughts of her long-buried history and the barrage of questions she never knew she needed answered, and his voice mostly becomes background noise to her wayward mind. She has a feeling Wick knows this – he talks about silly, useless things, and points at rocks and trails and talks about nothing important – but still, he rambles to cover the empty space and all the years between them, to keep himself busy and their travel light. There is a weight behind his pointless words, though – a caution, a line he will not cross, something he will not say.

 _'Many things,'_ she thinks, and it is how she knows already that Polis will not be kind to her. _'There are many things he will not say.'_

Wick tells her when they are only an hour away and shortly after Clarke begins to notice things: wooden structures built high in the trees, lights showing between the leaves. On the ground, beneath the roots: rubble, crumbling stone and rusting steel, the decrepit remains of a civilisation bulldozed by bombs and a long-finished nuclear winter.

‘Another city the earth took back,’ she mutters. Only a moment later, there is the muffled sound of shouting and laughter and a body falls roughly from the trees some fifteen metres to her left. Clarke’s hand goes quickly to her belt and the knives that she keeps there, but Wick just laughs beside her and urges the wagon on, unbothered. The body on the ground groans, and up in the trees the laughter gets louder.

‘There is a tavern,’ Wick tells her suddenly, probably noting her discomfort. He points up to the treetops, and the structures hidden among them. Treehouses, she realises, connected by branches and bridges and ropes. ‘By technicality, we have already reached Polis. Our government and our centres of commerce reside in the inner city – which is where we are going. When we are under attack we tend to recall our citizens for their protection, but there is less space within the walls now than there used to be. Many of our people live out here amidst the trees.’

Clarke nods, and considers this, and when a child laughs and swings by them on a rope by the trail ten minutes later her fingers twitch but do not move for her weapon. _'Tree People indeed,'_ she thinks when the little girl disappears back into the woods without a trace and the murmurs of civilisation get louder.

Izvir huffs and shakes his head, drawing Clarke out of her thoughts. She looks up just as their party rounds a bend, and the trees break open to reveal a river – calm to the eye but rushing beneath the surface, just like her – and the old cement bridge that crosses it, broken by time and reinforced with wood and scrap metal. Polis stands tall beyond it: large walls towering several stories high, half hidden by the leaves and branches of trees that stand just as tall. Clarke can’t fully hold back her surprise.

‘It’s something, right?’ Wick says, his eyes on her. She can hear the pride in his voice as the party around them picks up the pace, anxious to be home. ‘That dam over there? Barely working when Raven and I got our hands on it. Now this place has running power, running water – a functional _sewer_. Man, I didn’t realise how much I missed indoor plumbing until we got some semblance of it back. The Commander was really impressed.’

When he looks over the city the tension in his shoulders drops; Clarke isn’t sure if it’s because he’s made it back alive, or because his home is still standing here waiting for him. He must feel the weight of her gaze because he turns his attention back to her, grin appearing on his face.

‘I have seen many places in my time. None quite like this one,’ she admits. It’s more than she had expected when Lexa told her of Polis seven years ago – one of the largest cities she’s ever seen, in fact, and there have been several. ‘What was it before?’

Wick only shrugs.

‘The inner city?’ he asks. Clarke nods to clarify. ‘I’m not too sure. Some sort of military school, I think, before the bombs dropped. Kane’s the man to ask about the history of this place, though – I’m just here to blow shit up and fix toilets.’

The relief that comes with the reference is more than she expects. That is three names now that she knows survived the Ark: Wick, Raven, Kane. She almost asks after her mother; it is a fate she has wondered about several times in the last few years, though probably – and she thinks this with no small amount of shame – less than she could have. She refrains.

(It has been seven years, and the answer may not be kind to her.)  

‘You found us at the right time, Clarke,’ Wick continues lightly. ‘That was our last trip to the Ark. Had you shown up any later we’d have been gone.’ He pauses with something sad in his eyes, before forcing a small smiles and looking back to her. ‘We needed a few parts. Personal projects for the head of engineering – see, since the baby was born Raven’s been antsy as hell wanting to get back to work.’

He only realizes what he’s said when Clarke smiles a little more widely.

‘Raven had a baby?’ she asks. His grin in return is tentative, but proud. She knows that look. ‘Yours?’

He nods. She hadn’t even known Raven and Wick had been a thing – but then, she’d hardly even known Wick at all. She wracks her brains for even the slightest indication, and looking back on it now without the weight of her own emotional upheaval it is far easier to see. They had been starting something before Clarke had even left – present in Raven’s occasional rant about her new colleague, the obnoxious, blatant criticism of the engineer’s character, the way Wick had carried her all the way back from the mountain and steadfastly refused to relinquish the young mechanic to other hands.

‘A girl. She’s…’ his voice softens. He becomes quiet for a moment before his face turns thoughtful, and he looks up to the sky. The sun has begun to set, orange hues spilling across the sky. ‘Up there on the Ark, I was so full of myself – even after we came down here. But so much has happened, and…’ his shoulders shrug and he shakes his head. ‘We may be in war, Clarke, but life here is _good_. When I hold our little girl, I’m convinced we’re all right where we belong.’

There is a soft smile on his face, but pain behind his eyes - the same sadness she saw before – and when, after a moment, he opens his mouth to speak again Clarke wonders what he has to tell her that would haunt him so. He is interrupted by close shouting in Trigedasleng.

They stop abruptly on the bridge before they get to the gates and Wick shouts back up to the guard above them – she hears his name, and then hers, and something that translates vaguely to “audience with the commander”. The guard ducks out of sight with a loud shout that she takes to be positive.

The gates – hulking things, made of wood and plates of scrap metal – clanks loudly and inches open. Izvir shifts awkwardly beneath her – she thinks it’s awkward, anyway, and having spent so much time with the horse no one else would be better equipped to know – and Clarke pats at his neck in response. They open slowly, two grounders on each side pulling them in. Wick flicks at his reigns and the cart starts forward. Izvir takes little prompting to follow.

The city streets steal the breath from her lungs. Beneath their feet fifty years have swept dirt across the old asphalt streets and left grass to grow and tree roots to spider across the road, and twenty years of footsteps and horses and carts have worn it back to pavement in patches. Tree trunks erupt from old cement in some places – stubbornly seep their roots between the cracks in others – and stretch up in parallels with the kind of architecture Clarke has only seen in books, or in pieces out in the desert. High up on the strongest branches there are pathways, houses, pulleys and ropes – another dimension of their civilisation stubbornly set in the sky. And people – above, ahead, around, _everywhere_.

They make their way through the gates slowly and Clarke can’t help but take the time to stare. Back in the sands, Amir had told stories of Polis – but this is the first time Clarke truly understands his wonder. He did always say stories never did its size justice, and in this moment she has to agree.

For a moment she wishes she could see this place with him at her side. Clarke is sure her friend would have much to show her – the perspective of a learned tourist that he lent to every place they went together, back before –

Izvir jolts to a halt beneath her, turns his shaggy head to look back at her, and his eyes seem to say: “No, no. None of that.” Clarke snorts. The horse snorts back.

Wick has stopped beside them, and to their rear the gates grind closed. The engineer hands the reigns to the young Grounder seated beside him, speaking quickly – she makes out “wagon” and “mech shop”, but the rest she cannot hear.  Then he turns to her with a smile.

‘I’m sure we can find a spot for your companion at the stables,’ he offers. ‘The caretaker’s good with everything.’

She slides off her horse and follows Wick as he leads her off along the wall to her right. Izvir follows them calmly, led by the reigns still in her hand. The building on their left ends, and the space around them turns only to tall trees. After another five or six metres the dirt path that they follow opens up to a small, open field with a large set of stables off to the side, two horses and a bull-like creature similar to the two Wick had leading his cart idling in the pasture.

Wick taps her on the shoulder and points past the stables to a dirt trail too small for a horse to travel.

‘His tent is back there,’ Wick explains. ‘For privacy, mostly. And appearances. But honestly, we all know he prefers sleeping in the stables with the animals. He’s jumpy around people now.’

He talks as if she’s supposed to know why, but Clarke doesn’t bother to comment on it. As they approach the stables Wick whistles and a man limps out from behind a massive horse in answer to the sound.

Long, dark hair is tied back by intricate braids, and the closer he gets the easier it is for Clarke to catalogue his wounds. A brace on his left leg helps him walk, his right hand is missing two fingers. Scars mar the skin down the left side of his face, interrupted by a leather patch just the same as Wick’s. Beneath his scars – the signifiers of his sordid past – Clarke sees something familiar. She doesn’t recognize it until Wick speaks his name.

‘Hey Murph! Things going well?’

Clarke swallows thickly. It has been seven years since she last saw John Murphy – the haunted young boy who she nearly had hanged – but this person before her is practically a different man. He is taller now, but thinner – dark eyes and hollowed cheeks, somehow more gaunt than he used to be.

He left before the war, she remembers. She wonders when he came back, and whether he brought his demons with him or found them here.

‘Clarke here needs a place to keep her horse while she visits the Citadel,’ Wick explains.

Murphy’s good eye widens at the mention of her name, recognition crossing his face, they lock eyes for an awkward moment before he turns his eyes to Izvir. She is about to tell him “no” – he was a liar and a killer and a thief, and Amir has told her too many times “if you wouldn’t trust them with your wallet, don’t trust them with your horse” – but Izvir nickers quietly beside her and she halts the words. Murphy looks the horse over, expression calm, and when he reaches a hand out Izvir pulls forward and nudges into Murphy’s palm. Clarke watches Izvir huff happily, and finds the flighty part of her appeased by his acceptance. Murphy glances at her, and he must notice hesitance in her eyes because his voice is soft when he speaks.

‘If you’re ok with it, Clarke, I’ve got a clean stall for him. He can stay as long as you need.’ She nods once. Izvir gently pulls at the reigns still in her hand, and she smiles and offers them forward. If he’s okay staying with Murphy, she’s okay with it too. Murphy takes the reigns from her gently.

‘It’s been a long journey. If you could brush him down and give him water, it would be much appreciated,’ she tells him quietly, moving to retrieve her satchel from where it is tied to Izvir’s saddle. Her hands hesitate over her quiver and the curve of her bow. ‘Careful feeding him anything by hand, though. He likes to bite as a sign of affection.’

Izvir snorts as if he understands the words – she pats roughly at his head, ruffling the hair of his mane – and when she glances at Murphy he is smiling.

‘Leave the bow,’ Wick says. ‘You won't be allowed weapons in the Citadel, anyway. Murph can look after it, along with anything else you have in your saddlebags that you don't need.’

Clarke idles at the direction – it has been a long time since she has been forced to abandon arms – but after a moment she rifles through her bags. She retrieves the rolled leather of her med kit as well as Kali’s sealed trade papers – the whole reason for her presence. The rest she leaves behind.

‘You can come by to see him whenever. I’m always here,’ Murphy says. ‘I’ll look after him. And your stuff. It’ll all be here when you’re done with whatever doubtlessly sordid thing you’re here to do.’

Clarke nods, and Murphy leads Izvir away, towards the stable, speaking softly to him as they go. Izvir gives a huff in response to something and Murphy laughs quietly – a rough, warm sound that hardly reaches her across the field. Clarke watches quietly with Wick at her side as Murphy leads Izvir into an open stall and begins to dress him down. He’s slow and careful, and Clarke can see him talking to the horse as he works. When she turns to Wick after a moment, he grins lightly – if slightly pained.

‘He’s not who you knew before. He’s –’ Wick pauses then, he seems to contemplate what he should say. ‘– broken. When he was gone – well… There aren’t many who know what happened to him. Murphy doesn’t talk about it much.’

Clarke nods and doesn’t ask for details. This Murphy is hardly a shell of the boy she knew all those years ago, and Clarke knows better than to ask for stories she isn’t owed. Personal things should be left that way.

Taking a deep breath she turns to face Wick fully, ‘I think it’s time I go see the Commanders now. I’m on something of a schedule.’

They turn to go when a voice calls out to them – ‘Husband, oh _husband_! You've returned early. And you brought such pretty things!’ – and Clarke recognizes Raven’s husky singing immediately. She is standing just behind Wick so she knows Raven hasn’t seen her yet – knows she may not even recognize her if she did – but Clarke sees relief grab Wick as he turns to the woman approaching from the path.

‘Wife!’ he calls. She can hear the grin in his voice as he quickly makes his way to Raven, giving Clarke a view of her old – well, they were friends once, maybe. _Almost_.

Time seems to have done well for Raven. The war they’ve been dealing with seems to have touched Raven less – at least physically. She has both eyes, at least, and the only visible injury on her is the updated brace she was wearing back before Clarke left them. She’s older now, but no less beautiful.

Wick greets Raven with the press of his forehead against hers – and this part of the gesture, at least, reminds her of home. They hold each other’s faces and their eyes fall closed, bodies pressed together – Clarke can see them whisper something, and she can only guess it’s some sort of relieved greeting – and _this_ part is intimate. Clarke feels as she knew she would – like an intruder.

They pull away slightly – Wick places a kiss on Raven’s head, and he speaks up louder when he says: ‘While I’m sure you frothed, truly, over the fibre optics we scavenged, I did bring you one more pretty thing.’

He turns with Raven in his arms and nods in Clarke’s direction. Clarke straightens at the attention, hands falling limp at her sides. Their last conversation was about war plans and blowing up dams, and every one before that sat in some awkward spot between affection and resentment in the aftermath of Finn’s death. Raven turns to her and stares for a long moment, removes herself from Wick’s grasp and moves to stand inches away, and regardless of what Clarke expects this isn’t it.

They watch each other, scanning each other’s faces – so many changes, shifts in skin tone, fault lines and scars – and Clarke tries for a smile but knows it doesn’t meet her eyes. Raven speaks before Clarke can even find the words.

‘Shit, Clarke, you look weathered,’ the mechanic says by way of greeting.

‘That’s the best you got? You’re getting _rusty_ ,’ Clarke replies quickly. ‘Tell me, was it the age or the baby vomit that made you so?’

Raven’s face is steel as she stares Clarke down, but it only takes seconds for her façade to break. Her laugh is deep, and loud, and real – and Clarke doesn’t remember the last time she hears that sound. Raven grabs at her with grease-marked fingers and pulls her into a hug. It takes a moment, but Clarke returns it tightly. Pulling out of the hug, Raven turns to a grinning Wick.

‘Your child is hassling Monty back at the shop.’

Wick snorts and gives Clarke a vague salute over Raven’s shoulder, and Clarke thinks to herself with no small amount of joy: _Monty. Monty is alive_.

‘Note that she’s only my child when she’s causing trouble or throwing up,’ he tells her dryly. ‘But I’m up for baby duty. You should come meet the kid later. Raven will take you to the Citadel. Good luck, Clarke!’

Raven turns to her when he’s gone, and the smile slides from her face. She scratches at the back of her neck awkwardly.

‘The Citadel, huh? You’re here to see the Commanders?’ the mechanic asks. At Clarke’s nod, she heaves out an anxious sigh. ‘Had to happen eventually, I guess. We’ve only got Lexa in at the moment, unfortunately – for us, that is. The other is three days late back from a patrol. _You_ might count it as a personal blessing.’

Despite the joking tone, Raven is noticeably uncomfortable. Clarke wonders for a moment how three days is so feared – for her, for the place that she has come from, three days is hardly a thing at all. But even as she adds Lexa’s name to her list of living people and swallows down the hint of bile in her throat at the thought, she remembers Wick’s rambling on the journey back from the ruins of the Ark, the twelve days she spent laying siege to a mountain seven whole years ago, and knows without a doubt: the difference is war. It does not touch her home in the way it does theirs. Three days, for them, is everything.

And Lexa – she hasn’t thought of Lexa in years, unprompted. The stubborn Commander with a heart of stone that abandoned her before mountain doors when last they met. Clarke has known since leaving that this visit would not be kind, but her impending grief is suddenly much more real.

‘With any luck, she’ll stamp my papers and let me leave,’ Clarke mumbles.

‘Not likely,’ Raven snorts, derisive and every bit as disbelieving of the idea as Clarke is. ‘I mean, she’s not like you remember her at all – she’s kinder, less tense, likes to help with Ab– the kids.’ She blinks – only a quick tell, but Clarke knows what liars look like now and wonders what name Raven is avoiding. ‘She looked for you, after – well, let’s just say there’s a lot she wants to tell you. And seven years hasn’t exactly eased her stubborn streak, so – you’re not getting out of this city until she’s done with you.’

‘Yeah,’ Clarke sighs. ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

Raven gives her a shrug that seems to say “what can you do?” and a sympathetic smile, and leads her off down the path, away from the stables. Clarke falls into step beside her and contemplates her options. Things are meant to be simple – get in, get the trade agreements signed, say a few short hellos for the sake of whatever emotional stability Kali still thinks she’s lacking, and then get the fuck out and run back to the dunes. No matter what questions she has, now, an extended stay was never part of the plan – and she’s not so sure she wants to know the answers, anyway. Bad things have happened here – it’s plain to see – and Clarke doesn’t want to be dragged back into this world, she doesn’t need any more of the blood on her hands that she's sure it will bring.

The deeper Raven leads her into the city the more packed it seems, buildings and trees shoved so close together that they hardly seem to be separate things. And people – the noise of them, the smell of their food, and their ale, and their fires through the smoke in the air. There is more life here than she has ever seen in one space, but there is also an underlying tension. It doesn’t take much thought to figure out the cause: the late envoy, the missing _heda_. Curious eyes turn her way, and Clarke knows she doesn’t imagine the accusation, the caution, the call of “interloper, outsider” that she sees in every single gaze.

As they walk, Raven fills her in on what she and Wick did to improve the place over the years. She points out buildings of importance along the way: the medical area, the education centre, the mech shop where she and Wick work – hulking and never silent. They pass between two huge trees – “the Citadel Gates,” she calls them, though apparently they have never seen a door – and they come to a stop facing a building almost fully standing from before the Armageddon.

‘Apparently, it used to be some big US Naval Academy,’ Raven tells her. ‘Now it’s our centre of operations. The throne room, the war room – it’s all in there. We did some serious structural work after we arrived to open up more rooms. The Commanders stay here – their families, their guests, political envoys, some of the more important city residents. And there’s a training ground around the back – mostly for the personal guard, but sometimes they bring in the younglings to teach.’

They pause then, Raven waiting for her to take the lead, but Clarke stands there and stares at her feet, preparing herself for the battle of wills she is sure is going to happen. Lexa isn’t going to let her leave easy and Clarke is not sure how much of a fight she is prepared to give.

Apparently deciding she is taking too long, Raven grabs at her shoulder – ignoring the way Clarke flinches at the sudden touch – and shoves her into motion.

‘Sooner you get this done, the sooner you can meet my gorgeous, _adorable_ offspring,’ Raven tells her with forced lightness. ‘She’s an angel, really. She does this ridiculous little snort thing when she laughs and hearing it will change your life.’

‘You’re really selling it,’ Clarke says. ‘I’m going to be so disappointed if I meet this kid only to find out she’s part lizard.’

‘If she is, it’s from Wick’s side of the family,’ Raven shoots back.

They’re to the steps now, and two Grounders block their way when they reach the top. Both of them – large men, hulking and glaring in the way that Clarke has always known the Trikru to do – have their hands on their weapons, and Clarke can only manage to quirk a brow at the gesture. Raven just rolls her eyes and stands slightly in front of Clarke.

‘Out of the way, boys,’ she tells them stiffly. ‘The Commander is waiting – I’m sure you know this. And I _know_ you know my face.’

They share a look, until a voice behind them makes them separate – loud enough for Clarke to hear but too quick for her to translate. Knowing Trigedasleng is not the same as being good at it. The guards look to argue, but a girl emerges from the room behind them – young, dark skinned and dark haired with bright, blue eyes, hardly a day over fourteen.

‘Raven would not bring a threat to our home. Let them pass,’ she says, and glares until the guards bow their heads and step aside. The young thing turns her gaze to Raven and smiles, bowing her head and turning to go inside.

‘That’s Darya,’ Raven tells her with a smile. ‘Lexa’s second.’ Clarke wonders what the tiny girl must have done to earn that position. Raven grins at Clarke’s expression. ‘Weird, right? But she’s a dangerous little thing – so she’s learning from the best.’

Darya leads them to a large flight of stairs inside that lead to a set of double doors. She stops at the bottom beside a long, empty table and turns to them.

‘The Commander awaits you,’ she says with an odd lilt to her voice. To Clarke it sounds familiar, but she cannot properly identify it. ‘However, I must ask that you relinquish your weapons before entering the throne room.’

Clarke is surprised to know that Lexa is aware she’s here until she remembers Wick muttering to his young friend in the wagon. Beside her, Raven huffs.

‘Come on, kid,’ Raven drawls. ‘Seven years would be a hell of a long time for to wait to kill the Commander. More still, pretty sure Lex can handle herself.’

‘Policy dictates –’ Darya starts, but Clarke halts the argument with the clatter of the knife from her belt hitting the table. She follows it by taking the pistol – the same one she left with seven years ago, well-kept and cared for - from where it is tucked into the back of her pants, hidden beneath her cloak, and dropping it onto the tabletop with a dull thud. The young girl stares at her, wide eyed, but when Clarke does nothing else other than stare expectantly back at her she collects herself and hardens. ‘And the others.’

With an idle snort, Clarke moves to comply. The three knives hidden in the folds of her tunic glint sharply when she drops them on the table. She follows them with the one in her left boot, the one in her right, and ignores Darya's glare (not the least bit impressed, that girl) as well as the way Raven looks at her for the first time as though she is truly the stranger that seven years has made of her. There is another blade in the holster bag harnessed to her thigh, it’s twin strapped _beneath_ the bag itself – and just when Raven surely thinks she’s done, Clarke yanks up the sleeve of her shirt and exposes the odd sheathing contraption strapped to her left forearm, just up from her archer’s glove, and bares the two shining throwing knives held within it. She drops them down on the table and stares at the young girl currently judging her worth, crossing her arms over her chest while she waits.

‘Acceptable,’ Darya says after a long moment, and turns her head away. Clarke sighs and glances at Raven, still beside her and staring shrewdly.

‘Who _are_ you?’ she whispers, and Clarke wonders how she feels when it is only half a joke. ‘How many knives do you _need_?’ Clarke just shrugs and Raven stares back at her, mystified. ‘Well. Go on then, Princess Sharp Edges. Maybe whatever you’re here for will keep the Commander’s mind off other matters.’

The deep breath Clarke forces in before she works her way up the stairs does very little for her fraying nerves. Darya leads the way, and when they reach the top Clarke glances back to see Raven chatting with the two guards who stopped them at the door, punching one in the arm lightly as he laughs. Shaking her head, she turns back to the door as Darya pushes it open and gestures for her to enter.

The room beyond is huge. Fabric hangs from the wall in a mix of red and a deep, royal blue, and a large chandelier hangs from the ceiling above two thrones on a raised platform at the other end of the room. One throne is empty and draped in the same dark blue fabric around the room. The second throne, red, is most notably occupied.

Lexa sits upon it in exactly the same manner as before – the first time, when they were young and dumb, and Clarke thought she could talk sense in senseless times. Her armor is similar – small changes and replacements with age – and her posture is such an echo of the confident Commander in her war tent that it makes Clarke sick. This time her knife is not in hand, her face is clean of war paint, and she stands slowly as Clarke enters the room.

She looks older. Tired. Clarke knows the feeling.

Darya crosses the room quickly to stand to the right of the throne, and Clarke follows slower – far more reluctant to enter this space in any capacity at all. She is about to speak and reintroduce herself but she’s beaten by Lexa’s irritated tone.

‘Who have you brought before me?’ the Commander asks her second, and Clarke is sure it is supposed to be quiet enough to be considered polite, but her ears are keener than they used to be. ‘You know we have a guest on the way, and I do not have time for an audience – that’s – Clarke?’

Lexa’s eyes widen in shock when she finally connects the dots, but it is quickly extinguished. That doesn’t mean she isn’t still feeling it; Lexa has always been good at pretending not to feel a thing.

‘Heda,’ Clarke says back – the only acknowledgement she can manage considering the tightness of her throat. Lexa seems to both stumble back and sway forward at the sound of her voice, no matter how short her words.

‘It has been many years, Clarke,’ the Commander says, her tone tight, strangled. Maybe she is not as good at pretending as she used to be. Clarke blinks and stops short of the dais, pleased to keep distance between them. ‘Most thought you dead.’

‘A fanciful notion,’ Clarke replies dryly.

When she doesn’t immediately move to continue, Darya steps up beside the Commander and leans in to mutter in her ear. Clarke doesn’t need to hear it – the words that follow are telling enough.

‘My second tells me that you had no less than eleven weapons on your person,’ Lexa says. ‘Ten of them knives, most of them fit for throwing. May I inquire as to the purpose of this veritable arsenal?’

‘Protection,’ Clarke grunts.

‘From what?’

‘Everyday life,’ Clarke tells her flatly. ‘Does it matter so long as I am not throwing them at your head?’

‘If I were to search you now, would I find another blade?’ Lexa asks around a frown that is not entirely upset. Clarke tilts her head idly and pretends to consider the question.

‘That would depend,’ she says, ‘on where you were willing to put your hands.’

Lexa gives her the hint of a smile – hardly a thing at all – and it convinces her to move slightly closer. She stops at the edge of the platform and decides on honesty – probably the best chance she has of getting this done and dusted and running for the hills before it can bring her any backlash.

Her hands reach into her satchel for the papers, but she stops dead when she sees Darya reach for her blade and hiss a quiet warning. Between them Lexa merely sighs, raising her hand to call the young girl off. She speaks quickly in Trigedasleng – from Clarke’s rough translation it sounds to be a dismissal – and Darya glares at Clarke for a moment, eyes clearly conveying the threats she wishes to speak, before turning and heading to a door to the side of the room. It slams behind her.

 _'Making friends, Clarke,'_ the blonde thinks to herself, pulling the documents out of her bag all the while and stepping cautiously onto the dais to hand them to Lexa. _'You’re always making friends.'_

The Commander takes the papers with no small amount of curiosity and breaks the seal with cautious fingers. Looking them over, her confusion is evident.

‘Trade agreements? For a _Sanskavakru_ tribe? We have not had word from anyone from that far out in years.’ Suspicion clouds her eyes then, and Clarke can’t help but roll her own. This is going to take longer than she originally planned. Lexa swallows thickly and stares with accusing eyes, before she says ‘Amir is the runner for this tribe.’

Clarke wants to scoff at the paranoia, but Amir's name makes her heart sink. His absence is still a fresh wound.

‘The tribe went west four winters ago. We returned this way a month ago. Can't really trade if you're not local,’ she says by way of explanation. ‘But now we are, and our agreements need to be renewed before we commence trade. And Amir - unfortunately – is unavailable for travel. The war, as you can imagine, makes the journey more difficult. There are situations he is no longer capable of handling.’

The mention of war makes Lexa even more tense, her gaze more careful, and Clarke is sure a reply is on her tongue when the door Darya left through flies open.

‘Nomon!’

Clarke watches Lexa quickly move, stepping down off the platform and rushing to grab the small child who has barrelled so loudly into the room. The little thing giggles in the Commander’s arms, glances suspiciously at Clarke over her shoulder all the while – and all Clarke can think is:

_'Shit. I’m never going to get out of this place.'_

The child clings to Lexa happily, and it’s now that the word “nomon” clicks in her head. Mother. Lexa has a child – a _child_ – and it may be the most absurd thing Clarke has ever thought. Of all the people she knew, she never thought Lexa – the traitor, the blood-covered Commander – would have a child. Clarke had heard rumours, of course – from traders, and from Amir when he was feeling chatty and she felt like learning a thing or two about the woman who left her behind – that Lexa had taken a wife, but a _child_ is another thing entirely.

But then again, it has been seven years since she stepped foot out this far, and as Wick told her right from the start: a lot of things have changed.

Lexa is distracted, muttering calm words to the young girl, and Clarke has time to school her features. The small child chatters away, ignoring Clarke completely, waving her hands in frantic gestures, and Lexa is enraptured in a way that Clarke has never seen before. It is the child that eventually draws attention back to her.

‘Nomon,’ the little thing says. ‘Who is she?’

Lexa stands and the child quickly grabs onto her leg. As Lexa moves closer Clarke is allowed to catalogue finer features of the child – a heavy brow and dark eyes, somehow familiar, and her brown hair pulled back in a simple braid.

‘Alinka,’ Lexa says lightly. ‘This is Clarke. An old _friend_.’

The word is forced – Clarke doesn’t think she’s ever heard a person say something that sounded so painful to part from their lips – but the child doesn’t seem to notice, more focused on staring Clarke down from her hiding spot behind the Commander’s leg. Lexa smiles down at the child – five years old, Clarke thinks, maybe six – face full of love, pride and devotion in such a way that Clarke’s heart aches just at the look of it. Lexa leans down to the child once more, speaking softly in Trigedasleng.

‘You know you aren’t supposed to be here when mama and I have visitors, Link,’ she says. ‘You should be with your tutors. Mama will be home soon.’

Clarke knows those words are meant for comfort – though whether they are for the child or Lexa, Clarke isn’t sure - but the little girl seems soothed by them all the same. The sound of faint cheers and muffled Trigedasleng echo in from the anteroom. Lexa’s hand flies to the sword at her hip when the main doors far behind Clarke fly open.

The sound of faint cheers and muffled Trigedasleng echo in from the anteroom. Lexa’s hand flies to the sword at her hip when the main doors far behind Clarke fly open.

 _'My luck,'_ Clarke thinks, _'is astounding.'_

She doesn’t turn around, even when she sees the relief sweep across Lexa’s face and the child at her side grin widely. The little girl shouts ‘Mama!’ and shoots off past Clarke to the doorway at her back, Lexa following, slower but no less happily – presumably to greet the late envoy, the second Commander home from war. Clarke tilts her head back, pinches the bridge of her nose, and longs for the sands.

Curse Kali and her affinity for soul-searching. Clarke is going to return weeks late, now, with an endless tension headache and a throat rough from perpetual sighing. She steels herself again, preparing for more introductions and delays, but when she turns and finally alights eyes on the other Commander she’s left dumbstruck.

It’s Octavia.

She is older, weathered, armoured, her hair braided in similar fashion to her wife’s – dangerous, every inch of her from head to toe – and some part of Clarke wants to laugh hysterically, because Octavia Blake is the Commander’s wife and this – _this,_ truly – is the most absurd thing she has ever seen. She picks up her daughter, smiling in a way that reminds Clarke of being seventeen and watching some sweet stranger take their first step on the ground, spins her laughing child and speaks.

‘Link, little one!’ she greets, her voice as raspy as it ever was, but kinder than Clarke remembers. That’s probably not a hard bar to pass – last time they spoke, Octavia thought her a killer, cold as ice, and treated her with the revulsion such a station would deserve. She hadn’t been wrong. ‘You kept nomon in line while I was gone?’

The child giggles and Octavia puts her down as Lexa reaches them. They embrace much like Wick and Raven had earlier – and Clarke sees it: the softness in the both of them. Lexa sags into her wife and Clarke crosses her arms and turns her eyes away, made uncomfortable by the private moment.

Her gaze connects with a guard standing watch at the door – a filthy, bearded man, who has clearly brought the blood and dirt of war home with him. He stares back, studying her in exactly the same way. She wonders if he sees something similar in her – the dirt of travel, the scars of battle – and if her nomadic braids and Sankru cloaks are as strange or as dangerous to him as his Trigedakru armour is to her. Alinka rushes to him, loud in every way, and he turns from his examination to pick up the child.

His laugh is familiar. His smile, beneath his beard, is more so. Bellamy Blake, living and breathing before her and practically a stranger. Clarke swallows thickly, glancing back to Lexa and Octavia as the two Commanders break from a kiss. Octavia clings to her wife and they breathe the same air, relief obvious in the way Lexa smiles.

Clarke just shakes her head, rolls her eyes skyward with a long, tired exhale, stares at the ceiling and thinks: _'how is this my life?'_

She can pinpoint the exact moment that Lexa remembers she is there by the Commander’s awkward cough and the way that it echoes in the large room.

‘Houmon,’ Lexa says, suddenly stiff in her tone and so far from the softness she exhibited only moments before. ‘We have a visitor.’

Clarke pinches again at the bridge of her nose, already too exhausted for formality. This is not how she wanted things to go – in fact, she had no intention of _this_ happening at all. In, papers signed, and out – no pain, no emotional upheaval, no tears and preferably no fist-fights. Things were supposed to be _simple_.

Octavia turns to her then, scans her face despite the metres between them. The recognition, when it hits her, is obvious, but cold eyes and a stiff jaw quickly replace it.

‘Bellamy,’ this Commander says, turning to her brother by the door and confirming what Clarke has already guessed. ‘I’m sure your wife is missing you, and Link would love to play with her cousin. You should go.’

Despite the wording it is a dismissal, and Clarke is about and inch away from slamming her own palm into her face to reassure herself that this is reality, and not some desert-spurred delusion forced upon her by toxins and a tortured mind. Wouldn't be the first time.Bellamy stares at her across the room for a long moment – a stranger in Trigedakru armour, some ghost of a young man Clarke once knew taking residence in his features – but nods eventually at his heda’s direction and takes Alinka with him as he leaves.

Bellamy stares at her across the room for a long moment – a stranger in Trigedakru armour, some ghost of a young man Clarke once knew taking residence in his features – but nods eventually at his heda’s direction and takes Alinka with him as he leaves. The doors thudding closed behind him echo like a death sentence, and Clarke wonders if she will ever be allowed to leave at all.

The Commanders move to their thrones and seat themselves, and Clarke is left standing before them alone, small, pointless. Lexa relaxes, looking much the same as she had when Clarke first entered. Octavia’s eyes never leave Clarke. She’s wearing war paint – not unlike the pattern she wore back when they attacked Mount Weather, though more prominent now – and armour very similar to her wife’s but with a sash of blue - the same colour as the fabric on her throne - hanging from her shoulder in place of Lexa’s red.

‘Clarke,’ Octavia says, her voice soft in the silence. It grates down Clarke’s spine, and she flinches at the feeling. ‘Why have you come to this place after so many years away?’

There is something in her tone – something Clarke remembers from her own, back when she stood by war tables and levers in control rooms and made a monster of herself in the name of freedom. She would hazard that it is part of why so many hold Octavia so highly – because it is not the voice of Octavia Blake, girl and warrior, it is the voice of a Commander.

It makes Clarke remember. It makes Clarke _sick_.

‘Trade agreements,’ she explains stiffly. ‘I came to get them signed. That’s all.’

Lexa seems to remember the papers in her hands – crumpled during the course of their reunion – and smooths them out quickly before handing them to Octavia. The young woman scans them and looks back to her wife. Their stare lasts – some silent debate that Clarke is not privy to.

All this dancing around is starting to exhaust her. She never should have come. If she’d waited a week, Kass could have taken this run to save her the trouble.

‘Elder Kali requests no changes from the last agreement, and has authorised me to accept or reject any new terms that the Trigedakru may require on her behalf,’ Clarke tells them, more to fill the silence than anything else. ‘But if you don’t have any, we can just get the papers signed and I can go – get out of everyone’s way and go back home.'

 _'In fact,'_ she thinks, _'I’d prefer it.’_

‘I don’t recall you having such anxious feet, Clarke of the Sky People,’ Lexa mutters, apparently amused, and Clarke flinches again at the title.

‘Sand,’ she corrects, trying not to pay too much heed to the flicker of Lexa’s smile. ‘Sand People. I do not hold my home amongst the sky.’

Both of them stare at her after the statement, and when her left hand twitches, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, she forces them both behind her back and links her fingers to hide it. Octavia hums to gain her wife's attention and gives her a nod, and Clarke knows, absolutely, that she’s not going to be leaving Polis anytime soon at all.

Lexa calls for Darya, who enters the room quickly and rushes to her Commander’s side. The whisper to each other and Clarke can’t make out the words, but Octavia pays them no mind, too busy staring Clarke down. Cold eyes scan her from head to toe, and Clarke wonders what it is the Commander is thinking but knows better than to ask. Truly, she’s not sure she wants to know.

Commander. Clarke never thought she’d hear that title added Octavia’s name – not after Tondc and the young warrior’s outrage, certainly not after how easily Lexa resorted to trying to have the girl killed. She wonders if Octavia knows about the hit Lexa took on her and Clarke saving her life, and whether Lexa knows how much Octavia wanted her dead too. She might laugh at how alike they were in that case if she felt it would do her any good – and if she didn’t think she would dissolve into hysterics somewhere along the way, spurred by the ridiculous shitshow she's apparently stumbled straight into – but with the way Octavia is watching her she is sure such a display would only cause her more problems. Their attention is drawn to Lexa when she clears her throat and stands.

‘Clarke, I assure you we _will_ get to your papers, but we have certain customs regarding political envoys that must be upheld – Amir may have mentioned them to you in the past,’ the Commander says. ‘We have had rooms prepared for you, and there will be a place for you at evening meal. While I trust that the Sanskavakru have not changed the terms from the previous agreement, I would be loath to commit myself without further consideration given that we are in a time of war. My wife and I will look over the documents properly before we commence discussions.’

‘How long?’ Clarke asks tightly. Behind her back her hands are shaking. Lexa smiles as though she doesn’t hear the dischord in her tone. Octavia just continues to stare her down, statuesque.

‘A few days,’ Lexa tells her simply. ‘Long enough to negotiate fair terms and erase the exhaustion of your journey before we send you on your way.’ She looks to Octavia then who finally moves her eyes away and locks them with her wife, and Clarke scowls - because her three weeks in the woods were not even _half_ as exhausting as the last half hour she has spent in this throne room. ‘There are things we must discuss, Clarke. Things you do not know and need to.’

Clarke does not want to _know_ anything – she just wants to _go_. Lexa frowns, and Clarke wonders if the Commander can see it on her face. She nods to her second then, and the young warrior walks back to the door to the right.

‘Perhaps later,’ the Commander offers gently. ‘Darya will show you to your rooms. I will have someone fetch the last of your things from the stables and return your weapons to you in kind.’

If she is waiting for gratitude she is doomed to be left disappointed. Clarke leaves without another word, sick to her stomach and so, so tired. She has no interest in being around them any longer, and follows Darya through the side door and off down the hall without even so much as a glance behind her. Darya leads her through three more corridors and stops before a large door on the second floor. Clarke wonders how much she would have to antagonise the young girl before the warrior would try to kill her, and whether it would be less painful than staying here for another day.

‘This whole hall houses the guest quarters,’ the young girl says stiffly. ‘This room will be yours for the duration of your stay. The bathroom works and you are free to shower. If you require a guide to navigate the city at any time, mention it to one of the guards at the front door and they will assign you one. An attendant will fetch you for our evening meal in an hour.’

She leaves then, quickly back the way they came, and Clarke sighs and enters the room she’s been given. Silence greets her; it is the kindest thing she has heard all day.

The room itself is extravagant – nothing like what Clarke was expecting, and she has a feeling this isn’t exactly the type of room Amir was ever given. Clarke moves to the window and throws open the heavy drapes, letting in the dying light of the day. The view is beautiful: her room is overlooking the river behind the city, painted warm hues with the sunset and turning dark out on the horizon.

It is calming – everything she needs, really, since all her plans have gone to shit. Amir mentioned customs – a day or two of warm meals and uneasy sleep within firm walls – but she knows that this will be different. Customs are not why they are keeping her here.

Clarke sighs, removing her satchel and sitting it in the chair by the window. She moves to the large four-post bed in the centre of the room and flops back onto it, body sagging into the soft mattress, bones weary from travel and the tension of the day. All the questions she’s had have long since left her with a headache and all she can do is lay back and try to get some rest, get her mind back on track. She stares idly at the ceiling; this is going to take much longer than she originally planned, and far, _far_ longer than she wanted.

_Just – damn it. This was meant to be simple._


	3. Chapter 3

Clarke tries to use the bathroom quickly – _tries_ , because showers are not foreign to her but they certainly are a luxury – and ends up zoning out watching the filth of travel mix with the water at her feet and spiral down the drain. When she emerges back into her main quarters, skin clear of dust and her hair damp and tangled, the candle on the table by her bed has almost burned down to its first mark.

She will be late to dinner, she knows – and she is not sure whether to feel bad for it, for the insult it may be taken as, or glad for the interrogation she knows it will save her from.

Darya comes to fetch her while she is doing her hair – weaving red and purple twine into her thin braids and looping them back towards her ponytail, above the faded blue of the bandana that keeps the bulk of her locks out of her face. The practiced motions soothe her anxious hands. It is about as close to calm as she is bound to get for the duration of her stay.

‘One minute!’ she calls in response to the first knock, earning an impatient second only moments later. When Clarke opens the door – partway through her last braid and rushing to complete it – Darya stares at her with a pursed lip and a heavy brow, just as unimpressed as she was an hour before. Clarke is sure they’d both be happier if Lexa had just signed the papers to begin with and let her go.

‘You’re going to be late,’ the young girl dryly intones, and Clarke rolls her eyes and ties her braid off.

‘Only according to someone else’s schedule,’ Clarke says. ‘What is it that your mentor says to young girls with anxious feet…? “It takes as long as it takes”?’

‘I would not take life lessons from someone who ran seven years away from their problems,’ the Commander’s second tells her, all too blunt away from other eyes. Clarke laughs.

‘I took my problems with me, _nontu_ ,’ she says. 'It was my friends that I abandoned.'

Darya glares at her - cautious and curious, like all people are to foreign things - and denies further conversation. She leads Clarke back towards the throne room, but takes a left turn where they should have turned right and stomps down a short hall to a set of wooden double doors with a still warrior on either side. The guards move to push the doors open with their approach.

The courtyard they emerge into – edged by hedges and generously lit by the braziers fixed by the doors – is one of the most extravagant that Clarke has seen. A large, round table sits in the center of the yard, hidden by a tablecloth as white as the stone pavement beneath it and surrounded by dark figures on wooden chairs. There is already food at the table, and the servers flitting through one of the side doors prompt Clarke to believe that there is more on the way.

‘There she is!’

Raven’s voice is immediately recognizable, and Clarke zeroes in on the patrons. The mechanic grins at her, cradling a bundle of cloth to her chest that Clarke can only assume to be the mystery child. Wick, beside her, waves. The others turn to face her, and Clarke winces beneath the weight of the crowd.

 _Start small_ , she thinks. _Start with what you know._

‘Was your shower everything you thought it’d be?’ Wick asks when Clarke has crossed the ground between them. ‘We thought you might have drowned.’

‘Because I wasn’t here, prompt and proper?’ Clarke questions. She snickers at the spread of food before them and puts on the most pompous accent she can muster. ‘My clan doesn’t set much stock by _hors d'oeuvre_ _s_. Or clocks.’

‘Nah,’ Raven says, acknowledging the tone with a small smile and little else. ‘Thought you might have drowned _yourself_ , actually, after your meeting with our hedas.’

‘Would that I were a little less cowardly,’ Clarke tells her lightly – _too_ lightly considering the confession. Raven inhales slowly at the phrase but saves herself a comment. ‘Now, where is this life-changing child that you promised me, and does it have fangs?’

With a laugh, Raven rises to offer her the cloth bundle.

‘Hold her for a minute,’ the mechanic says. ‘I’m going to take a walk around the table and tell them all to stop staring at you. Everyone else was here on time, bar lady warpaint and her dearest wife, even warpaintier.’

Clarke takes the little bundle with practiced arms and no need for coaching, and Raven disappears immediately to circle the table. The child sports Raven’s skin tone, her hair and the furrow of her brow, even in sleep. Wick is prominent in the baby girl’s chin, her cheekbones, and – as evidenced when her eyelids flutter open and she stares up at Clarke in fascination – her eyes. She is a tiny amalgamation of Clarke’s past, only short weeks into life, innocent and inherently beautiful.

‘What’s her name?’ Clarke asks quietly, glancing up at Wick to find him watching her with a small smile on his face.

‘Abby,’ he tells her. ‘She was like a mother to Raven once you were gone. After the, uh – well, we wanted to honour her the best we could, I guess.’

The past tense is noted. Clarke swallows thickly, but is not sure that she is surprised.

‘Did she pass well?’ she inquires. Wick hesitates, perhaps realising that after all his secrecy on the way over he was still the one to break the news, perhaps considering a lie.

‘She passed quickly, and with purpose,’ he says. ‘I don’t know that she could have asked for more than that.’

The child in her arms whines and wriggles, and when Clarke looks down to her Abby’s face scrunches up in disgust and she cries – loudly. Years before it might have made Clarke cringe – now she just shifts the child in her arms and idly whispers ‘Yeah. She felt that way about me too, I think,’ before she offers the kid back to her father.

Raven reappears beside Clarke with another body at her side, and Clarke recognises him straight away: Monty, seven years older and still shaggy haired. He bounces anxiously from foot to foot until she turns and opens her arms to him; he is quick to hold her and slow to let go.

‘I’m so glad,’ he says quietly with his forehead pressed to her shoulder. ‘I don’t know where you’ve been, Clarke, but I’m so glad you’re okay.’

“Okay” is a broad term, but Clarke doesn’t disagree. She hugs him just as tightly; of everyone she knew he was the one who hurt her least, and by that standard the one she missed the most. She is glad that, in spite of whatever tragedies befell them here, Monty survived.

When he releases his death grip on her and takes a half step back, Clarke has the time to see him properly. He has a thin scar to the left of his brow and a sharper hollow to his cheeks than before; his eyes are dark, and warm, and he is older.

They are all older. It shouldn’t shock her – so is she.

‘There’s an open seat by me,’ he tells her. ‘You’ll end up by one of the hedas, but it’ll save you from jumping in too fast with the rest of them.’

Clarke looks cautiously to Raven where she stands just over Monty’s shoulder. The mechanic tries for a reassuring smile, and Clarke is sure that it would work on almost anyone else.

‘Don’t get too enamoured by the fine cuisine and fancy digs,’ Raven tells her lowly. ‘Octavia’s gonna be snarky as ever. Keep your cool and you’ll be fine.’

‘Harper and I will take care of you,’ Monty says with a warm hand on her shoulder. Clarke catches his gaze and evaluates the worth of his word for a long moment before complying. When she moves to follow Monty around the table, Raven claps her lightly on the back, all physicality and silent cameraderie – sending her off like a soldier to war.

The trek is a short one, and Clarke spends all of it trying to identify faces without meeting any gazes. She recognizes Harper, of course, by the empty seats that Monty is aiming for – then Darya, Bellamy, a brown-haired woman by his side and a child between them, Raven and Wick, Ryder, Kane, a handful of faces that Clarke doesn’t know. The family her old friends have made, so many other faces absent from the circle: Miller, Jasper, Monroe, Lincoln.

Her mother.

She wants to ask, but she doesn’t want to know – or maybe the other way around. The jovial atmosphere of a family dinner is not the right kind for questions like that anyway.

Monty puts a hand on her shoulder when they reach their seats to keep her standing, and all around the table the conversations die off. For a moment Clarke thinks that it is because of her, but then comes the rattle and scrape of a door opening behind her and the patrons of the table rise to stand, and she knows: the hedas have finally arrived.

All eyes look past her at the power couple and their chattering child – the respectful lull before seating, the acknowledgement before the feed. Clarke does not turn for them. Instead, she takes the brief moment of distraction to look around the table at all the strangers she used to know. Of all of them, Bellamy is the only one to stare straight back.

He looks different in the grounder clothing – but unlike seven years ago when it draped around him like a second-hand costume, Lincoln’s gaping hand-me-downs, Bellamy has grown into them. The chain and leather moulds to the muscles that have overtaken his lanky form and there is a wolf pelt stretched comfortably across his broadened shoulders. Bellamy’s gaze is hard, but welcoming. She wonders if it will remain that way when she tells him about all the things she has done.

‘We will speak. Tomorrow,’ he mouths to her – and she can tell the words apart, even with the full, braid-marred beard he sports now getting in the way. Clarke has become far too adept at reading lips – Amir saw to that.

 _Wrong_ , her mind whispers. _You made that happen. Amir never wanted that._

The three empty seats between them are filled, and her old friend – partner, companion, co-leader – turns his eyes away. It is simultaneously all the acknowledgement she requires and not at all enough.

Not when there is worse coming.

Lexa takes the seat at Clarke’s left: the lesser of two evils. Octavia sits beside her brother and the daughter, Alinka, slides into the chair between the two of them. When all three of them are comfortably placed – and only then – the others around the table move to sit as well. Clarke joins them.

There is a short moment of silence afterwards while they all wait for the servers to emerge into the courtyard and carry the food in with them; Clarke does not kid herself into believing it to be a common occurrence. They are all curious little things with a lost relic placed at the table, something old that they are not sure they’re allowed to ask about.

She is a festering wound they all forgot about. They are almost the same for her.

‘We have a guest this evening,’ Lexa calls into the silence – the most awkward way to highlight the already awkward inclusion, of course, just like her to do. Clarke sinks lower in her chair. ‘An envoy from the _Sanskavakru_. We celebrate her return to our people, and will extend every courtesy that we would any other friend to you all.’

The distinct click and creak of the doors opening resounds through the courtyard and Clarke almost sighs her relief.

Lexa is older now, harsher, with a ropy scar adorning her right brow. Her wife is scarred on the left side of her stiff jaw, all the youthful naivete gone. Their daughter shuffles on her chair between them, and for a moment the two hedas look human. But that moment passes with the blink of an eye, and then they are both statuesque: the stone cold co-leaders of the new world. An attendant begins placing cups on the table, and Octavia grabs hers up as soon as it lands before her.

‘To unexpected company,’ she says, and the toast sounds cheerful but Clarke doesn’t need seven years to be familiar with the distaste in her tone. It makes the blonde grind her teeth.

Their cohorts echo the call – minus the tone of inelegant disgust – and then the hedas’ attendants are placing food at the table, and conversation begins to flow around bites of roasted meat and swigs of wine. Beside her, Monty and Harper discuss a difficult patient in the city’s medical building, and Clarke gathers from their easy conversation that Harper has taken up the occupation of healing in her years away.

The others around them speak of their day to day, and Wick talks loudly about his trip to the Ark, the things his helpers spoke of on the journey, and the remains he brought back from the ruins. Bellamy and Kane are loudly debating war, but not their own: some travesty of human history that occurred more than a century ago, and the ideals around it. Their argument is friendly, and it is clearly a familiar topic. Kane talks about “maybe bringing it up with the kids next week” and Clarke quickly ascertains that he is a teacher of some kind. Clarke picks idly at her plate – cuts the meat rather than eating it and pushes the portions around with her fork while she listens to the voices around her.

‘Does the food not appeal to you?’ a quiet voice asks from her left, as self-assured as it is cautious. Clarke, to her credit, does not flinch at the sound – though it is a near thing. When she turns, it is to Lexa’s green eyes watching her: curious, if guarded.

‘There is nothing wrong with it,’ Clarke assures politely. Then, almost an afterthought: ‘It's not what I'm used to.’

‘So you’re too good for it, then?’ Octavia asks, two seats away but no less aware. Lexa frowns at her wife’s words and glances back towards her, and Clarke pulls in a slow breath as she considers how to respond, cutlery idle in her hands. Anything less hostile than “being in your city makes me sick to my stomach” is probably a good start.

‘I have been west,’ she says. Her tone is calm where Octavia’s is brash. ‘The spices are different, and the dishes. Most of my meals in the last months have been cooked over campfires. Lavish plates from a stocked kitchen – it’s unusual to me. Not bad, just not to be rushed.’

Octavia scowls, and Lexa shakes her head at her wife and turns to give Clarke a small, wan smile.

‘What is the west like?’ the heda asks. Clarke wonders if she truly believes that changing the subject will cut the tension – but then she believes in the notion of reincarnation which is almost as absurd. So, probably.

‘Depends how far you go,’ Clarke manages with a small laugh. ‘You’ve never asked?’

‘I haven't known many to venture past into the dead zone, and fewer to return,’ Lexa tells her. ‘Your regular runner – Amir, isn’t it? One or two others from other wandering clans. They do not often speak of their travels.’

‘Can't be true - Amir would talk about travelling for days if you let him,’ Clarke says, almost teasing. Octavia turns again at the tone and shoots her a glare, and Clarke’s stomach roils with the motion. Her smile flickers, but she forces it to stay regardless. ‘The dead zone stretches for miles, and it can be easy to get turned around when you go in without a heading. But like all things it ends – in this case, maybe sixty miles from Chicago.’

‘The city from the old world?’

‘Yes. Mostly ruins now, and partly grown over, but beautiful all the same,’ Clarke says. ‘I’ve seen other cities: Detroit - north west of here, barren and reclaimed by the sand. Louisville, Kansas City. The smaller towns in between.’

‘And there are people there?’ Lexa asks, rapt, and for a moment Clarke wonders if telling her is a good idea – if perhaps there is a reason aside from the Commander’s abrasiveness and isolation that the other envoys have kept their travels to themselves.

‘Many,’ Clarke tells her, smiling to belie her caution. ‘Different towns with different customs. I’ve made friends in all walks of life to the west.’

‘And left them all behind, obviously,’ Octavia grumbles.

Lexa twitches at her wife’s low tone, and Clarke wonders if, in the event that they didn’t have a child sitting between them, Octavia would have earned an elbow in the side from that alone.

‘I would like to hear more of the west during your stay, Clarke,’ Lexa says in lieu of an apology, though her smile is obviously more forced now. Clarke nods.

‘If it would please you, heda.’

Clarke is saved from the threat of further conversation when Wick yelps in disgust from his seat across the table. His sleeve is coated in some kind of gravied stew and there is a chunk of some kind of vegetable mashed into the side of his face. The tiny child bundled in his arms waves her mush-covered hands and gurgles happily while Raven howls with laughter beside him, and Clarke’s small smile at the antics is nothing short of genuine.

‘Did I hear you mention Chicago, Clarke?’ Kane calls to her. She nods in response to the question.

He is grizzled when she looks at him properly – older, hair graying, made haggard by time, but kind in spite of it. He has a fork in one hand, and the other – well, the other is little more than a metal prong sticking out of his sleeve, forearm resting idly on the tabletop. This is what war has done to her friends; she is not sad that she missed it.

‘Fantastic! I’d love to hear about it!’ he says, though it is as much a question as it is an exclamation. ‘I’ve been teaching history to the kids in the city. Unfortunately, my knowledge of recent history beyond maybe two hundred miles from here is a little… lacking. Perhaps you could give me some perspective?’

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I don’t know how comprehensive I’ll be, but I can tell you what I know.’

 _Within reason_ , she thinks while he nods at her gratefully and goes back to his meal.

Across the table Bellamy is being accosted by a small boy – his son, Clarke assumes – who climbs across his lap and yanks at the food on his father’s plate to grubby his own hands. While she watches, Clarke feels something nudge its way between her and Monty. When she turns it is to see the back of a brunette head, not yet up to her shoulder height even when she is sitting.

‘Monty,’ Octavia’s miniature copy says while she digs her elbow into Clarke’s knee, apparently oblivious, ‘can I have your potatoes?’

‘Are you carb loading?’ the technician teases. ‘Bulking up at six years old. Your mother’s got you started early. Too much of that and you’ll start to look like a pauna.’

The child pokes him in the stomach, then scrapes two potatoes off of his plate and onto the one in her hands. She leans against Monty’s chair and eats from the plate with her hands. When she turns to look at Clarke her mouth lolls open between every chew, exposing the mush in side.

 _And to think_ , Clarke notes, _this is the future. Like mother like daughter, I suppose_.

'Hi,' the little girl says around a glob of chewed potato.

'Hello,' Clarke replies quietly.

Children are not a foreign thing to her – they have run between the Sankru tents freely for all the time that she has lived amongst them; she has helped Kali to deliver babies, nursed them back from illness in the cold season, told them stories, sung them off to sleep. But this child comes with a blood history of love and betrayal, and seven years of silence on all fronts - this child is something else entirely.

‘I’m Alinka.’

‘Clarke,’ the blonde gives in return.

‘I know. I've been told stories of you my whole life,’ the small girl says. ‘The demon who burned my mother’s men, the Mountainslayer who saved us all. Seeing you, you don’t seem so special.’

‘I wouldn’t imagine so,’ Clarke tells her lightly, caught somewhere between wanting to laugh and to scowl. Alinka frowns at her, apparently perplexed, and Clarke is forced to clarify. ‘Those are just _stories_ , little one.’

‘So you didn’t do those things?’ Alinka asks. Presumption, hostility – again, like mother like daughter. ‘Does that make my mothers liars?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On who you ask,’ Clarke tells her simply. There is no spite behind the words. After seven years she has forgotten what that feels like. Somewhere behind her Octavia grunts, and Clarke pretends not to hear it.

‘History favors the victor, Link,’ Kane calls from across the table, the chiding tone of a teacher, and the little girl frowns her way into pensive silence and withdraws from Clarke’s side, retreating back between her mothers. Clarke watches her go and thinks:

 _History has never favored me_.

‘So. The _Sanskavakru_ ,’ Monty mentions quietly, drawing her gaze back from the child. Clarke turns to him with a furrowed brow, but seeing his genuine curiosity – and no hint of ill will – she manages a smile and a short nod. ‘How did that come about?’

He asks it as though it should be some matter of happenstance – as though Clarke met the tribe and took the papers on the same day, as though her loyalty to them shouldn’t be earned. The assumption offends her for as long as it takes to realize: her life is as much a mystery to them as theirs are to her. She can not list the things that they must think of her – what Monty, particularly, must think her capable of – but it makes sense, considering her flight seven years past, that “settling down” wouldn’t be an item upon it.

‘They found me in the desert years ago,’ she tells him honestly. The next fact she skews. ‘I was… ill. Elder Kali insisted on taking me in where others would have left me to die. I owe her my life.’

‘Sounds like a blood debt,’ Harper says idly from Monty’s right. Clarke snorts with a quiet smile, unoffended.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Kali used to tell me daily: I could go, I'd paid her back kindly. She'd give me a pack of supplies, a sword, a horse to go west. I told her no every night for eighteen months before she stopped asking.’

‘Then what kept you?’ Monty asks. There is a tone in there somewhere that Clarke cannot quite recall – grudging, or sad, or cautious. She only hopes that it will not be eclipsing.

‘The same things that keep you here, I’d imagine,’ Clarke offers with a shrug. A bitter laugh resounds from her left, the sound jarring and grating down Clarke’s spine, and when she turns to view the culprit she finds Octavia glaring at her around a stoic looking Lexa.

‘You mean to say that _war_ kept you out with the scavengers in the dirt? The same way that it has imprisoned us?’ the heda asks – accuses – altogether done, apparently, with Clarke’s presence.

 _It’s understandable_ , Clarke thinks. _I’m about done with her attitude_.

‘No, _heda_ ,’ she answers. Her tone is calm, almost pacifying – but it is fracturing. ‘We do not fight for land, for gold, or grudges – and we don't pick sides. I wouldn't deem to know much of your war at all.’

‘I should hope not. Not while you and your kind cower in the desert to hide from the real world,’ Octavia snipes, and Clarke grits her teeth and focuses on breathing slowly and thinks _“cool, cool, just stay cool”_. The knife in her hand – originally sawing idly at whatever seasoned meat is on her plate – turns, almost without her intention, point down to the table and clenched in her fist, gouging a hole in the wood. ‘So with consideration, _Clarke_ – what do you think _keeps us here?’_

‘Love,’ Clarke tells her stiffly. Between them, Lexa cringes. ‘Loyalty. Family.’

‘Family?’ Octavia scoffs. ‘Family never kept you. Your family was _here_. You left them behind to go play princess in the desert. We watched them _die_ in your absence, one by one.’

‘I did not come here to compare tragic histories with you, Octavia Blake,’ Clarke says. It is as final as she can make it – as much of a warning as she can give without giving a warning at all. And it is the last out that Clarke is willing to offer.

Around them, the table is silent. An audience for the show.

‘You wouldn’t know tragedy if it slipped a knife between your ribs and kissed you goodbye,’ the young commander spits – a reference so old and faded that it almost doesn’t meet it’s mark.

Clarke jerks in her seat, slams her fist down at the table hard enough to leave the knife embedded solidly in the wood, and glares back at Octavia with all the fire she has left in her being.

‘I don’t belong here,’ she says. ‘You have made that perfectly clear. But I will not sit here and allow you to belittle my losses just to justify your own.’

‘How dare you-’ Octavia starts. She is halted by Lexa’s hand dropping over her own, and Clark’s voice recklessly drowning her out.

‘You've lost people. I _know_ ,’ the nomad says. ‘People you seem to think that I am responsible for – people that I _was_ responsible for, seven years ago, when I was seventeen, and childish, and too young for the burden. But do not think, even for a second, that in that time I have not also lost friends. This is not the only city in the world. You are not the only people. And just because a terrible thing did not happen _to you_ does not mean that it _didn’t happen_.’

The statement hardly has time to resound in the silent courtyard before Octavia’s chair is skating back across the tile.

‘I’ll have your tongue cut out for speaking to me that way,’ she promises, jerking to her feet. Beside her, Lexa lurches up to intervene.

‘Octavia, she’s not wr-’

‘See how close you get to my lips before I slit your throat,’ Clarke shoots back loudly, standing to her own defense.

‘Clarke!’ Lexa shouts, shoving at her wife’s shoulders and whirling a scandalized frown back at the blonde, brow furrowed and eyes clearly saying _“that’s not helping – not helping at all”_.

‘I am not your subject,’ she reminds them both tautly. ‘And I will not hold my tongue to appease your egos.’

It doesn’t seem to cow the heda at all – if anything, it jams a steel rod down Lexa’s spine and pulls her shoulders back. For the first time in seven years, Clarke sees her: The Commander – strict, stoic, unforgiving, the woman who left her on a mountain to let her loved ones die. Clarke wants to cry her rage, claw at flawless, aged skin and make the stone statue bleed; she wants to throw up. Even so, she doesn’t cringe, doesn’t drop her gaze. The Commander glares at her with every drop of iron in her blood; Clarke isn’t cowed either.

‘You will follow our rules, Clarke,’ Lexa orders. ‘You are, after all, a guest in our city –’

‘Is that what you call it?’ Clarke scoffs, because they have given her lavish quarters and a place at their table, but they’ve also given her veiled words, a schedule and a time limit, and they may as well name it a prison routine.

‘Your elders should have sent the normal runner,’ Octavia gripes. ‘He’s less –’ She cuts herself off and looks Clarke up and down slowly, a distasteful curl to her lips, apparently trying to decide which aspect she most wants to criticize, ‘– vocal.’

Clarke’s laugh is humorless.

‘Amir? Definitely,’ she says bluntly. ‘He’s talked a lot less since the desert wolves ripped his throat out.’ Octavia doesn’t flinch at the phrase, but the fire in her eyes definitely dims. It isn’t satisfying at all. ‘I’ll leave you and your family to eat your meal in peace – because this is beginning to feel much the same.’

She leaves without awaiting a response, disappears into the bowels of the old naval academy and tries to find her way out to the city. The building is stoic, like its residents, and silent like she wishes they would be; Clarke is eager to escape its walls. It takes her several long minutes to find her way back to the entrance hall, but the guards open the doors for her almost as soon as they see her. The air outside is warm and sticky, cooling with the darkening sky and scented with the smoke of woodfires.

She makes it out of the Citadel and into the streets of the city itself long before the rage in her abates. The smoky scent of the air makes her chest feel tight, and her hands weigh like they’re made of iron as she lifts them to clutch at her shirt and soothe the pounding beneath her ribs. She ducks into an alley, away from the few people walking in the evening, and counts her breaths.

Dinner parties have never done her a kindness. Her mother is dead. Monty and Bellamy and Harper and Kane and Raven are alive. Her mother is dead. She has made an enemy of both Commanders tonight.

Her mother is _dead_.

She needs to get out of this city.

Her path to the stables is mostly stumbled, but she makes it past the flickering torchlight of the guard post and into the small shelter unhindered. Izvir nickers gently as soon as she comes through the doors – a sound familiar to her, her scent familiar to him – luring her down to his stall. His saddle is laid over a post beside the store, and her saddle bags – with her bow still attached, in spite of Lexa’s promise to return her weapons to her – sit on a table on the opposite wall. It’s enough, really. There’s nothing else she needs.

‘This was a terrible idea,’ she tells Izvir. He stares at her in the dim light, dark eyed and silent while the other horses shift and whinny in the stalls around them. ‘Kali was wrong. And I think we should go home.’

‘Might as well have one for the road.’

Clarke jumps at the voice and scans the room, but it still takes her a long time to make out Murphy. He is hunched in the far corner, hiding beneath brown blankets and dark shadows. When she spots him he lifts a hand to her, and in it a bottle of clear liquid. Moonshine, probably.

‘Murphy.’

‘Startled deer, Clarke Griffin,’ he says with a slight chuckle. ‘Did I catch you doing something untoward? Fleeing for the hills? Don’t worry. I would too if I had anything out there to go to.’

‘Why aren’t you up there at the dinner party?’ Clarke asks cautiously.

Murphy smirks when he returns with: ‘Why aren’t you?’

She hesitates for a long moment, and Murphy gives the bottle in his hand a gentle shake. Clarke feels his amusement, but nothing about his gesture seems hostile; the steps between the stall and his place in the corner take only seconds to cover, and she flops down on the ground beside him in the dark and presses her back against the wall. Fitting. The bottle is heavy when she takes it from him, but not uncomfortably so. The moonshine burns her throat when she takes it down.

‘I’m invited,’ Murphy tells her after a long pause, apparently assured when she doesn’t choke at all on the drink. He grabs the bottle back from her and takes a small swig. ‘Every time. I never go. It’s not really my thing. I don’t like… _crowds_.’

There is something in the way he says it that sounds like an untruth. Clarke thinks maybe he just doesn’t like _people_ instead. Or trust them. She may not know the cause of it for him, but it’s a feeling she understands.

‘You’re missing out,’ she tells him dryly, and he offers her the bottle again at the tone. She takes it from him without hesitation. ‘There’s nothing quite like rich food and bad company to start the infighting.’

‘You didn’t think coming back would be easy, did you?’ Murphy asks.

‘No,’ Clarke scoffs. ‘I guess I just thought the person who would take it the hardest would be me.’

Murphy’s only response is a thoughtful hum. They sit in silence for a while after that trading the bottle back and forth, accompanied by the occasional _thock_ of hooves on dirt, and the whinnies and brays of the animals.

‘What’s it like out there?’ Murphy asks after a time. ‘In the sand?’

‘Gritty,’ Clarke tells him. ‘Hot. Dirt in your shoes, and your hair, and your clothes – that shit gets everywhere.’

He smiles and grimaces like he knows. It’s been a long time, and there’s a lot about seven years ago that she doesn’t fully remember, but she’s pretty sure he has reason to have a clue.

‘Ever get lonely?’

‘No,’ she tells him. ‘Not in the sands. Not without walls around me. It’s hard work, but there’s love. Laughter. I found a family there, for the first time since – long before we ever touched the ground.’

‘What about the hundred?’ Murphy asks, but unlike Octavia there is no scorn in his tone. ‘The skaikru? Weren’t they your family?’

‘The greediest family I ever had,’ Clarke tells him dryly. ‘Faithless. Jealous. Wanting. Those who took so much and gave nothing in return. Not much of a family at all.’

‘Why’d you come back then?’

‘Why did you?’

‘I _had_ to,’ Murphy says. ‘With what I found out there? I couldn’t stay away.’

Clarke doesn’t know his story, but she is sure that “what he found” was likely infinitely more tragic than _any_ of her discoveries; there is something in his face that speaks of conscience – something he had lacked when she knew him well. They have very different reasons for returning to these people, but surely some of them – even just accents, embellishments, shadows of facts – are the same. And so:

‘Neither could I.’

They do not speak of heavy things after that, do not share war stories or speak of loss. Murphy doesn’t fill her in on his scars, nor anyone else’s. Instead they drink, and talk about sand, and drink, and Clarke mentions names like Kass and Amir and Kali, and talks about the tribes in the sands, and drinks some more. Later, Murphy stumbles to his feet and drags her from stall to stall, introducing her to all the beasts he watches over – including Izvir, as though the steed is not her own.

They end up in the deserted field just outside the stables with two more bottles of moonshine and Clarke’s bow and her quiver. It takes her two tries to string it, and then Murphy sets a tarp over a hay bale in the corner and draws a target on it with charcoal, and promises her a shot for every arrow that hits. Clarke slowly makes it to seven in a row, spread awkwardly across the warped target.

Murphy starts singing – some loud trikru shanty that sounds to have come straight out of a tavern, and Clarke laughs, and laughs, and fires her arrows into darkness. Whatever happens after that is a blur, but the memory of drawing her bow and shooting an arrow straight up into the sky sticks with her – of standing in the field with her arms widespread and Murphy standing likewise beside her, laughing madly, the both of them waiting to be struck.

If the arrow lands she doesn’t see it.

No, she sees ghosts – dark shapes in her peripheral vision, willing the arrow to land true. Ghosts she hasn’t seen in years, now, since her fever broke and the dreams stopped and Kass tattooed a map on her arm.

And then Ryder steps out of the shadows, and she wonders if he is dead too, if he has come to take her on with the rest of them, if Kali was wrong and she _deserved it now_. He speaks gruffly to Murphy and earns a response before stepping to Clarke, knocking her bow out of her hands and hefting her off the ground entirely. She ends up strewn over his shoulder, closing her eyes to fight the way Ryder’s gait makes the world heave. Murphy calls a farewell to her and she grunts one back, but cannot remember the exact words later on.

Clarke does not know much of Polis, but the route Ryder takes is familiar to her – the same route to the Citadel that she had taken before. The doors of the naval academy open soundlessly, so clearly her captor is recognized. He does not stop until he has walked all the way to what Clarke thinks is her room, where he drops her roughly back to her feet on the floor, and Clarke huffs out a sigh when he doesn’t immediately take his leave.

‘What? Are you going to lock me inside, too?’ she asks, because the nauseating journey has sobered her enough for indignation. He stares, stoic, and if she hadn’t met him before in her life she might have thought he hadn’t understood the question.

She knows better. He is just doing as ordered.

‘Sorry,’ Clarke says. Ryder relaxes instantly at the tone. ‘You can go now. Tell your hedas that their sand snake is back in it’s glass box, just as they want of it.’

Ryder gives her a short nod in spite of the sarcasm and waits for her to open the door and stumble on into her quarters. In her absence someone has lit the fireplace and stoked it to roar, as well as the candles in her room – no less than fourteen of them, half burned down now, and she will have to blow them out one by one before she sleeps – and brought in the last of her things from the stables. Her bow lies, unstrung, on the wooden table near the closed windows, framed by the rest of her things - and she does not know how it got here before she did, does not remember anyone else in the field or the halls who could have brought it ahead of Ryder's fast walking (but then maybe he wasn't so fast). They have all been organized and perfectly placed, and Clarke knows without having to ask a single damn person that every single one of her possessions has been examined twice over – pulled apart and catalogued, and put back together for perfect presentation.

The air in the room is thick, and warm, and she slumps back against the closed door while it clogs her lungs. The sounds of Ryder’s footsteps departing never meet her ears.

They have called her a guest and an envoy, all pretty, trusting words said in good faith – then assigned a curfew and placed a guard at her door, rifled through her belongings like the wealth of knives she carries on her person are not danger enough. Clarke’s stomach roils.

 _‘I shouldn’t have come_ ,’ she thinks, ‘ _I should have left it for Kass. They would let her come and go as she’d please_.’

Her throat feels tight, and her skin feels hot, and she can feel the sweat before it begins. It is not the alcohol; she wishes it were. Her lungs ache in her chest and she cannot draw breath, and across the room the fire crackles loudly.

 _‘Burn out,’_ her brain says – pleads. ‘ _All things do.’_

There is a ceramic jug on the table, sitting amidst the remains of her spoiled privacy, and Clarke jerks forward on unsteady feet to yank it from its perch. It is heavy with some kind of liquid she doesn’t stop to ascertain before tossing the whole thing at the fireplace. The jug shatters loudly against the brick, sending ceramic shards and (thankfully) water raining down on the burning logs. They sputter, and smoke, and mostly continue to burn.

 _‘Nothing_ ,’ Clarke thinks, ‘ _this fixes nothing, not a damn – shouldn’t have –_ ’

The ceiling is solid when her gaze rolls up, and there is something very wrong with that. Cold fingers curl around her spine, and Clarke’s lungs seem to freeze, to spasm in her chest. There are no stars, and there is not enough air in the room, and the fireplace smokes and hisses and keeps burning in spite of the fact, and –

 _‘– no sand, no sky, no Kass, Amir, Kali_ ,’ her mind supplies. Her vision blurs and her chest lurches, and Clarke does not know if she is crying or if she is dying here, suffocating in a room with a soft bed and every measure to keep her caged short of bars across the windows. _‘Prisoner, again.’_

‘I’m not,’ she stutters out loud, but the walls around her are stark, and she envisions herself in solitary at seventeen, dragging charcoal across the walls to pass the time, nowhere to go and nothing to do; feet on the ground, clothed in a month’s worth of dirt and others’ expectations, throwing around orders and her best attempt at understanding; a white room and a white shift, bare feet on cold tile, needles and quarantine; distrust, hope, insanity; armor and blood.

_‘There’s always something.’_

She is too busy gasping and coughing and clutching at her chest with one hand to notice the way her other clutches at one of the wooden chairs by the table and lifts it from the ground. The sounds it makes when it crashes through the window pane is barely enough to jar her into motion; she stumbles after the chair, wraps her hands around the jagged window frame and leans out to inhale the cool night air.

No one barges in to investigate the noise. Maybe she was wrong, and Ryder is not posted outside her door, guarding her from the shadows in the halls, guarding the halls from her. Maybe instead, he’s there, and he considers her privacy in some way that his hedas don’t. Or – or – _maybe_ he just doesn’t care what happens to her inside of this room as long as she doesn’t leave it.

Maybe none of them do.

Outside and a whole floor down, glass shards litter the yard – the wooden chair splayed amidst them, dismantled by the impact. Clarke clutches the shattered glass and structures her breathing until blood is running across her bare palm and soaking through her archer’s glove, and the outside chill sinks back in to her dampened skin. It is nothing like the desert, but it is enough to coax her inhalation back to a regular pace. She is haggard, and sick, and drunk, and caged – and moving is too much to think about.

In the morning she wakes up wrapped in furs on the floor beside the bed, the bloody handprints she left behind dragging herself across the room the only indication of how she got there.


End file.
